A Quiet Love Story
by DramaMamaLlama
Summary: Written b/c I think this movie would have been better as an angsty romance. Rated M for scenes from traumatic past that Kwon Yoo (Cap) and Yeo Wool will comfort each other about, and b/c Kwon Yoo's character was made for a smokin' hot love scene. I read a lot of fanfiction, but this is the first one I have ever written.
1. Discovered

Fabricated City: A Quiet Love Story

Yeo wool paused the flight of her fingers over the keyboard and looked up briefly from the monitors. It was time to accept that her apartment needed cleaning. The mess of leftover take-out containers and dirty laundry was reaching the critical stage where she either had to call in a cleaning service or move out.

She cringed a little at the trash heaps she had generated. The apartment was spacious and well furnished; it was the type of upscale complex that had appealed to her as 'living in style' when she first leased it. With it's lavish decor and equally lavish price-tag, it screamed money. When it was clean, there was no one who would guess that it's owner had grown up in the slums, or that at one time she had been at home in the squalor of unpainted walls and bare mattresses on cold floors. But the mess now seemed to betray her dirty origins.

With a sigh, she turned back to the monitors. She had a cleaning service on call, and could probably have them here in a hour. But it would require shutting down for while they cleaned.

Another day then. Today she had a mission.

She pulled back her short black hair to fit the headset into place and activated the app that would convert her alto voice into a male's deeper baritone. Tucking her short legs up under herself to get comfortable in her swivel chair, she logged into the Game.

Her avatar 'Mr. Hairy' appeared alongside the other Team members as they entered the waiting space. Her Team. Considering she had only been playing with them for three months, it was strange how they already felt familiar, like friends she had know for a long time and had come back to visit. Since she had no friends in the 'real' world, she knew she wasn't in a good position to make a comparison, but the feeling of camaraderie was undeniable.

As they waited for everyone to arrive in the ante-area of the game, there was the customary joking. In the recent few weeks, most of the Team had solidified the bond by meeting up in real-life.

Everyone but her and the Team Captain.

Cap hadn't been able to make the events and she, we'll, she hadn't even considered it. She didn't do 'real' anymore. Even her avatar didn't bear any resemblance to her. With his bulky figure and grizzly, bearded face he was about as far from her slim frame and delicately female features as she could have made him.

She grimaced at the idea of what they would think of her if they met her in the 'real' with her anti-social tendencies. In the last few years outside of the net she barely spoke. She wasn't even sure she knew how to hold a conversation. Meet up? No thank you. The 'net' world was so much better.

Still, she was curious.

She surveyed the other avatars and wondered briefly how similar to the 'real' the images were portrayed. She knew "Cover" and "Conceal" were a married couple in the game and the 'real'. Cover's game body was a svelte blond with a revealing leather bustier and equally tight leather pants. "Conceal", "Demolition", and "Near Space" sported intimidatingly masculine avatars, and "Captain Kwon"...

...Yeo wool paused on the thought.

It wasn't the first time she had imagined what Cap looked like. Maybe because his voice sounded younger than the others. It was soothing, with a certainty in it's quality. In her imaginings she envisioned that in the 'real' his appearance would be as assuring as his avatar.

Yeo wool guessed that his avatar was probably very close to his true appearance with short dark hair and a lean frame. Some time over the last three months of interaction with him, she had become convinced that for him, the Game wasn't just a game.

She remembered from the beginning, there was a fierceness and seriousness to his voice when he issued orders. In the game chat he seemed relaxed and unimposing, but when he entered the game, donning the title "Captain Kwon" a transformation occurred. His voice became strong and commanding, his focus and resolution absolute.

He had taken his role, his responsibility to the Team so seriously. Taking risks with his character, dying over and over to protect the weaker players, to protect her. Something about his tone, the way his breath transversed the audio channel; she could tell that surviving the game mattered to him, but he was unwilling to compromise the life of his Team members for his own success.

She knew other's might find his personal immersion in the game funny, even a little pathetic. But she understood.

For so long, she had been living in the digital world that the boundaries between the 'real' and the 'digital' reality had faded and in some places disappeared. Her day and night had little distinction these days. Surfing the net, playing games, hacking. This was her true world, interrupted only briefly by the necessities of sleep and food and the occasional shower. The hacking brought in the money, the money brought the food to her door and bought new hardware and software to support the hacking.

Yeo wool was drawn out of her thoughts by "Demolition" who had noted that they should have started 5 minute ago. Cap still hadn't arrived.

Yeo wool frowned. That was really odd behavior for Cap. They'd had late starts before but never because of Cap. He was consistently early.

Another five minutes passed, then ten, then twenty. The Team agreed to disperse and return in three days.

Three days later, Cap has still not logged in.

Yeo wool began to be more than just curious. When he didn't show up on the third day, she had hacked into the games server and looked at his login profile to see what his normal login patterns appeared. With her skills, that was child's play.

The query showed that every day for the last 2 months, like clockwork, he had logged in 2-3 times a day, so this was an anomaly. Going further back in her query, she saw he had logged in consistently for more than a year. He was a dedicated gamer.

By the time a week had passed, she became more and more concerned. In her previous search, she hadn't gone into his personal file. While more than capable of hacking personal information, she had her own brand of ethics when it came to online contacts; you didn't hack friends.

But by the second week of no contact she worried that something might have happened.

What if he had been in a traffic accident, or was in the hospital? She knew from past conversations he was unemployed. What if he hadn't gotten a job and wouldn't be returning? Given his dedication, that seemed unlikely. Possibilities kept swirling around in her head, making it difficult to concentrate.

At 3:30 in the morning on the 3rd week of Cap no logging in, Yeo wool gave in. She entered the codes necessary to access Caps profile and performed a cursory identity search on the "Kwon Yoo" and billing address that appeared.

The results returned by that first search shocked her brain like being suddenly submerged in ice water.

She had known what she expected the search to return.

Her software algorithms were top-notch, so she always got something. She was expecting school grade reports, part-time employment records, maybe personal blogs and photos with friends. Unlike herself, she know a person with Cap's easy-going and confident personality would have friends, probably even a girlfriend. A fleeting thought that she hoped there was no girlfriend flash through her ind unheeded and she discarded it; that was none of her business.

She just wanted to know he was okay.

What returned was a torrent of information of recent news results.

Glaring headlines read "Rapist. Murderer" with close up photos of a man shockingly similar to Cap's avatar. The images and words flooded her screen as she click link after link.

Disbelief converted to horror, horror to disgust as the information filtered through her quick mind.

It seemed like incontrovertible evidence; video, bloody knife, finger prints, pictures of a lovely girl-child and the grieving parents. The words 'semen'... ...'stabbed her 31 times'... 'raped twice.'

...coming out of her shock, Yeo wool thought she was going to retch.

The videos were endless. The media had latched onto the gruesome details of the murder scene; with the mutilation of the corpse and the depravity of the horrors the girl must have lived through. To Yeo wool, even displaying the details for all to read seemed like a violation of the girl. She felt dirty from reading it.

It described how Kwon Yoo had repeatedly met her after school, developed a relationship with her at a secluded rented apartment and eventually killed her there. As she scrolled through the content, she'd felt her body going numb with it, her brain refusing to process any more.

She had logged off the net and walked raggedly over to the couch, curling her legs up to her chest and hugging them. She stared into the darkness of the room and tried to do what her brain always did when it needed to protect her from the 'real' and if she couldn't retreat to the 'net', she deliberately disconnected her emotions.

Yeo wool wasn't sure when she had first started to do this.

She was aware it wasn't a normal, or a healthy response to emotions. In the series of psychological counseling sessions she had attempted, her Psychologist had termed it "Temporary Emotional Detachment Disorder". She had explained it wasn't that Yeo wool was incapable of expressing or interpreting her own feelings, but that in the struggle to do so she was simply choosing the easier path of avoiding them instead. Essentially, by not feeling, she was removing herself from the situation, just as by spending most of her time in the 'net' she was removing herself from 'real' life.

The Psychologist had been matter of fact about how this protective measure was usually learned from a traumatic experience, and that they would need to dive deeper into Yeo wool's memory to find the issue.

That was when Yeo wool cancelled the sessions. She knew what was in those memories, and she had no intention of going anywhere near them.

But for all that Yeo wool was conscious that her emotional condition was not normal or healthy, she also recognized that there was a definitive advantage to being able to break away from the emotions that could swamp her. When she disconnected emotionally, her analytical mind could take over.

Yeo wool had an amazing analytical mind, part of what made her such a successful hacker. Her ability to logically deconstruct and analyze the variables and functions of a problem from multiple angles was one of her greatest strengths. She was systematic in her approach to a search for truth; examining and discarding assumptions in a strict fashion.

So in the quiet hours of that morning, sitting on the couch in the dark, a few logical assertions clarified and crystallized in her mind.

Firstly, the media description of Cap as an anti-social addiction to violence in video games was inaccurate. While truly, the game they played had violence, Yeo wool had never observed Cap being violent for the sake of violence. She had observed this behavior in other players in other games. It was evienced by the shooting and mutilation of bodies already killed, the use of violence against NPCs when it was not part of the mission. These were not behaviors displayed by Cap. Nor had he made any verbal statements that would suggest a violent personality. Cap's focus had been on winning, not on the gore sometime necessary to win.

Secondly, Cap did not fit the characteristic profile of child rapists. Yeo wools own experiences had led her to in-depth research on the subject and she mentally ran through the checklist of factors related to child sexual abusers.

Cap has grown up without a father, but his relationship with his mother was close one. From Cap's off-hand comments, Yeo wool knew he lived with his mother and cared about her deeply, but she gave him his space when he needed it. It was unlikely he was a victim of child sexual abuse, physical abuse, or parental violence. Indeed, he had mentioned that because his mother had been protective, he hadn't had much exposure to violent media until his late teens when he started gaming. In general he seemed emotionally well adjusted.

Lastly, logistically speaking, Cap did not seem to fit the profile of someone who approached children. In searching through her memory of her query of Cap's login, Yeo wool recalled that Cap spent an inordinate amount of time logged in online, mostly during the time children would be out of school. When would he have made the time to meet and develop a relationship with the girl?

Coldly, now that her emotions were detached, Yeo wool picked apart and examined the evidence in her memories. Examined. Weighed. Re-examined. And finally, as the dawn shone it's first light onto the couch and onto her chilled, exposed toes, Yeo wool came to conclusion. She had not slept all night, but no longer felt the call to sleep. In the dimness, she stood up and returned to the chair in front of the monitors. She tucked her cold toes under her thighs to warm them and began to let her fingers fly.

It took a Yeo wool the better part of the morning to realize that something was very wrong with how her search for information was progressing. The normal methods were turning up unusual results.

Yeo wool hacking skills specialized in tracking of persons. Much of her daily business came from finding missing persons. Bail jumpers, dead-beat dads, cheating spouses, even the occasional missing child, these ere her targets. And she could track them with a skill that might have been the best in the business if there had been a way to independently judge such a thing.

So the first thing that Yeo wool did was to track Cap's movements over the week before the murder. By hacking CCTV footage and his cell records she followed him for the previous three weeks from his house to the LAN gaming center each day, and from the gaming center to his house.

But then she encounter her first hurdle. For the week leading up to the murder she was stymied. In each camera along the route, the footage showed nothing. The cell records were simply gone.

And the more she looked the more obvious it became that the evidence had been tampered with. Date stamps didn't match audit logs, frames of the footage showed tampering. It was very well performed, she wasn't sure she could do it any better herself, but it was there.

The more she look, the more she realized that every piece of evidence she saw appeared professionally staged.

At noon, Yeo wool was in full-blown search mode when her system alarms sounded. As a security precaution, she had set up digital 'trip wires' to alert her when an outside source was trying to compromise her system. With the immensely strong firewalls that she had built, the ability to get past the firewall could only mean a master hacker.

Yeo wool didn't believe in this kind of coincidence. Somehow, in her search for information on Cap she knew she had tripped someone else's alert and they were now searching for her. If they could do this, she was in serious trouble.

Her analytical mind quickly pulled the pieces of the puzzle together. The evidence pointed to Cap being framed. She had heard stories about the kind of people that had the power to leverage that skill set. She knew first-hand that the very wealthy could play with law and justice like their own personal toys.

The people who could do so welded immense power. They also had the power to find her. The alert was the final convincing evidence for her, with only one logical conclusion. Someone knew that she had discovered the truth, that someone was now looking for her, and if they found her, it was over.

She didn't second guess herself. In moments, she was entering the kill command, running the protocol that would wipe all of her systems data and eliminate any trace of her on the net. While the protocol ran, she efficiently entered her bedroom and packed a bag: toiletries, change of clothes, stacks of cash. She changed into jeans and an oversized hoodie. As she stepped out into her living room she watched as the protocol finished running and the monitors shut down. As she exited through the door for the last time and walked down the street, she didn't look back.


	2. Waiting

Her new space was a complete dump, but Yeo wool was oblivious. The last eight months had been a string of crushing disappointments and frustration.

After leaving the compromised apartment, she had accessed a stash of secret funds to finance a new base of operations, replacing her equipment with the latest upgrades in the process. Money was no longer an obstacle. With her expertise, she had solved that problem a long time. But security was paramount. She would need somewhere she could not be found by the powerful people she would be pitting herself against.

Her new home was in a relatively rural area, a dank floor in a building at the top of a steep incline that only someone who lived there or had business would attempt to climb. She had installed CCTV all all access points, and an alarm for anyone approaching the perimeter.

She could not afford to be discovered, but if her enemies did find her, she would at least see them coming.

Once her new software system was in place she carefully approached her investigation. This time she used every precaution she knew of to escape detection. In the meantime she placed automatic queries on the news outlets and governmental agencies so she could monitor for new information.

The trial proceeded at a breakneck speed, further confirming that there was a hidden force pushing forward the proceedings. Three months into the trial, she had collected crucial evidence; a potential suspect who had been seen leaving the club with the murdered girl, and video from a car dash cam showing that Cap had only been in the apartment where the murder occurred for just over 3 minutes.

With this, and the information about the modified footage from the prosecutors, it should have been enough to stop or at least hold up the trial. She had created a video showing that Cap was innocent and sent the collected information to everyone she could think of; the defense attorney, the prosecutors, media outlets.

But it was being ignored. Ignored and erased from what she could see.

In desperation, she had hacked into some of the smaller media outlets and posted the video and evidence. Only a small number of viewers saw it before it was taken down and information posted that the video was a scam. One of the outlets had continued to post it for a day, and their server inexplicably crashed, leave the entire site down for a week. When it came back up again, the post was gone.

Within four months, Cap had been convicted of rape and murder and sentenced to life in prison. On the day of sentencing, she watched the footage of Cap in the court room, screaming that he didn't do it, calling for his mother. That day, for the first time since she was a teenager, Yeo wool cried.

As Yeo wool continued to search for evidence, she monitored Cap's mother as she staged her protest and worried about her too. When Cap's mother found the video Yeo wool had posted online, she mentioned the video in a protest. The next week, Cap's mother was found dead; supposedly a suicide. Yeo wool had no doubts about what had occurred to Cap's mother. She regretted that she had not thought to take additional measures to protect her. Once again she had underestimated how far the enemy would go. But like with Cap, it was too late. She was helpless.

Two weeks after Cap was transferred to the prison where he was sentenced to serve the rest of his life, Yeo wool hacked into the prison computer system.

There wasn't much to access. Cell numbers and prisoner names, as well as the visitation and health records for each prisoner. But she was thorough, looking for any sign that he was okay, that he was safe.

When she found the first infirmary record saying that he had been beaten and with photos of his beautiful face so badly bruised, Yeo wool hadn't been able to eat or sleep for three days. The record said he had be placed in solitary confinement for two weeks and she shuddered to think what that would mean. She had researched the prison, knew what it meant to be stuck in a dark cold room, all alone, for so long.

Not being able to do anything to help him was so frustrating she wanted to scream. Instead she threw herself into the 'net' scouring and revisiting all the evidence.

She thought it couldn't get any worse.

But the next time she looked at his infirmary record, she realized she had deceived herself. With her keen ability to analyze, she couldn't fail to understand what the record showed. The bruises on his thighs, the close-up of his personal areas. He had been violated in such a way...

...her Cap.

She went into a rage that day, throwing whatever she could get her hands on, curling up on the floor when energy from the rage finally left her exhausted and empty.

How could anyone do that to her Cap?

She wasn't sure when she had started to think about him that way. Not just as Cap, but as her Cap. In the late nights of his imprisonment, his days of isolation, she sat in the dark of the room. Like him, she too was alone. Like him, she was in a prison from which she couldn't get free.

Yeo wool wasn't much for prayer, but as she sat there imagining his face night after night, she willed that if there was a god he would send her thoughts to Cap to let him know he wasn't alone. That she was waiting for him, and would find a way to get him out.


	3. Safe

On the day of the prison break, Yeo wool was hacking another media group site, searching for any information that might have been missed regarding Cap.

By this point, she felt like she knew him almost as well as herself. She had thrown her rule about privacy of friends out the window in hopes to find anything, anything, that could help him. Through social media, she knew what sites he liked to visit, his favorite foods, movies, books. She knew what subjects he did well in at school, what part-time jobs he had held, his preference in women and the names of girls he had dated.

Having found an online picture of him smiling, she sometimes spent hours with it on one of her monitors while she worked, just to feel like he was there. His black hair with a little curl, the strong line of his nose, his masculine cheek bones and firm chin. These she felt she knew as well as she knew the features on her own face. Sometimes thinking of him like this, happy and safe, felt like it stopped her from going insane. He was all she thought about these days and in quiet moments she wondered just how unhealthy her obsession had become.

But she didn't know what else to do. She couldn't banish the thought of him, alone in that hellhole. It ate at her every day.

When the news broke about the prison escape triggered her alert set up to recognize new news about Kwon Yoo, Yeo wool's went from elated to panicked in such rapid succession she thought she might pass out.

Where was he? Was he safe? How could she find him? She had to find him first!

Yeo wool fought against the rising panic. She needed to approach this logically.

Taking a deep breath, she slowed her breathing and analyzed what she knew about Cap and the possibilities.

It wasn't possible for her to get him out of the search zone, but she could misdirect the search, she could give him a better chance of escaping. If he did get out, where would he go?

She knew from her research that other than online gaming, Cap did have any close friends left. Even those he went to school with had publicly disowned him, many of them in very hurtful ways at the trial itself, making degrading statements about his personality and family. She wondered how many of the had paid to say those things, or how many had been threatened. It made no difference what the reason was, they were all going to pay for it one day.

But who did that leave for him to go to?

The answer came to her. The only other person who had visited him at the prison was the public defendant. Her research of the man hadn't uncovered much, he appeared to be an over-worked and untalented defender. His performance during the trial, and the way he had ignored her video and evidence had convinced her that he knew his client was being framed, but she didn't know his level of involvement. The man had also arranged for the funeral of Cap's mother, a surprisingly generous gesture. She had thought at the time it might be out of guilt for being complicit in the cover-up.

In any case, he might be the only person Cap thought he could trust or that might have answers.

With her fingers moving almost blindly fast, Yeo wool entered the commands to find the Defenders address and to tap into the CCTV cameras around it, she then started to watch.

While watching, she laid the groundwork for the next steps. She would need allies for what she intended, and she already had a Team in mind. With her trademark precision, she executed. Making calls, buying supplies, and preparing for the future. She could finally do something for Cap, and she was going to do everything she could.

Ten hours later, her guesswork paid off. With her heart pounding she realized the man that had just walked into the Public Defender's office was her Cap!

She froze the image of his face; he looked so different for only having been gone for 6 months. His features were still beautiful, but had grown leaner and taken on a more mature edge. He had cuts across his cheek and the brow of his nose that she worried over, but the biggest concern was his expression. So cold. So blank.

As she waited for Cap to emerge from the building, She switched to monitoring the police dispatch in the area. Yeo wool was not surprised when the call come through that the murder suspect was in the building. Cap clearly had not fully thought through the risk he was taking, or maybe he had known it, but felt he was out of options. If the only person he thought could help was the man who allowed him to be convicted, perhaps he was right. But as a CCTV at the side of the building captured Cap exiting the building via a stairwell, Yeo wool realized he must have known the risk too and planned his escape route ahead of time.

She followed him via street cams to a small internet cafe, and finally breathed a sigh of relief. If Cap went onto the net, there was nowhere she couldn't find him.

Yeo wool typed in the commands to hack into the internet cafes computer system. Child's play for her.

Cap had just run a search for his own name in the browser, then logged onto his own email account, not even using an alias. Even if she hadn't known he was going into this internet cafe, she would have been alerted he was here. She made a mental note that he would need some remedial training in the future on cybersecurity and cyber tracking. He clearly showed tactical skills, but he seemed to have no understand of just how easy it was to follow someone via a digital trail.

If she could find him so easily, this meant others would know now too. She had to move quickly.

In seconds, Yeo wool had taken over control of his computer screen and the CCTV camera in the cafe. She watched him as she played the video she had made of the evidence to support his innocence. As he watched, she saw him mouth the words "Mr. Hairy", and saw his look of disbelief as he reviewed the footage.

In the corner of the CCTV line of sight, she watched the Manager of the cafe pick up the phone and stare at Cap. From the expression on his face, she didn't even need to monitor the call to know what he was saying. She activated her microphone, and at the last second the voice app for Mr. Hairy.

"Cap." Mr. Hairy's voice came through the line. "Get out of there, the Manager's onto you. Come to namyang cafe in bukchang district. Let's meet there." With those words, she saw Cap stand up and go over to the Manager, yanking the phone out his hands and disconnecting the line, and then he was gone from the cafe.

Yeo wool was a little dazed as she stood up and walked out the door with only her two phones; the burner and her standard phone, in the hoodie she had been wearing since yesterday. This was happening, really happening. It was also so fast it didn't seem real. She had hired a taxi to bring her to the cafe', and the trip seemed to pass in a blur.

Before she had thought through what she wanted to do, wanted to say, she was sitting in the booth across from him and he was asking who she was and what was going on, if Mr. Hairy had sent her.

And just like that she was at a loss.

She had been so focused over the last couple days on finding him, on keeping him safe ,on making plans to protect him. She hadn't considered that to him, she was still a man he had never talked to. Mr. Hairy must still be in his mind a burly, middle-aged man with a beard that for some mysterious reason had collected evidence about him not being framed.

She would have to explain, but how? She recalled the extra burner phone in her pocket and pulled it out, sliding it across the table to him. She called the burner number and activated the voice app on her own phone. "Mr. Hairy" appeared on the burner screen and Cap picked it up immediately asking who she was, if she was trustworthy...

"It's me. The one in front of you. I'm Mr. Hairy." she started.

"But your voice..." he said in disbelief.

"It's an app" she answered, "a voice modulator."

She could see the instant the confusion on his face changed to something between disbelief and another emotion she couldn't fully identify. Something like fear. Something like hope.

The journey back to her home was nearly silent.

She wasn't sure how he would react to her being a woman, but as if of one mind, when she had stood up to leave the cafe, he had mirrored her almost immediately. She followed him back to his vehicle, got in without hesitation, and pointed out the turns as they came up.

Unlocking the padlock on the metal entry, he followed her into the building and she deadlocked the door behind her. If he felt trapped at being enclosed in the dark entry way, he didn't say anything. Instead he followed her down into the jumbled and dark living space, into where she kept her computer system.

Yeo wool sighed inside with relief. He was safe now, she could relax a little.

But what came next?

Walking into her computer room and booting the system, she again felt the loss for words.

In a moment of insight, she realized it had been over a year since she'd had a face to face conversation with anyone. And with the emotions roiling inside of her threatening to take over, she didn't know how to each start making that connection. In the end, she remembered the phone he still held and decided the easiest thing would just be to keep using it for now. It was a little weird, she know, but thought maybe he would understand.

Although he was looking directly at her, he picked up her call and she said the only thing that came to mind.

"Sit anywhere. It's safe here."

And then the proximity alarms went off.

It was bad timing. The alarms were jarring, as she had intended them to be, and she hadn't considered how anxious they might make him feel. In retrospect she wondered if they must sound like the prison, or maybe reminded him of the police.

He flinched badly, turning towards her and for a moment looking as if he had been betrayed. It made her feel a little sick inside. This is what it would look to have him think she betrayed her. She promised herself at that moment, that no matter what happened, she would never do that to him. Even if it meant her life, she would never have him look at her like that.

Thankfully, the delivery man simply announced the rice was there and left. She went up quickly to the door to pick it up, hoping it would put him more at ease. But even after she had come in with the large sack, it was clear he was still panicked. He reminded her of a startled animal, ready to flee at any moment. Finally, as if he had come to terms that he was at her mercy, he sat down.

Yeo wool descended the stairs with the heavy rice bag. Seeing him there, sitting on her couch, somehow suddenly just seemed beyond her comprehension.

Lost in the thought, the rice slipped and she fell ungracefully to the floor. He sprang up from the couch and rushed to pull the weight of the rice from her. He paused after lifting the bag, as if he was lost in the moment too, staring down at the bag as if he had never seen rice before.

"Is this rice?" he asked.

The question seemed to come from nowhere and go nowhere, but she clung to it as he he had said something profound.

"You said that you live alone." he continued."Where do you want it Mr. Hairy?" She couldn't follow his line of questioning, perhaps he meant there was a lot of rice for one person. Perhaps he was asking her if the rice was for both of them. Too many possibilities.

But the last question seemed easy enough. She could answer that without words.

She pointed to the large pot where the rice was usually stored.

As he carried the rice bag effortlessly over to the pot, opened the bag and emptied it into the container, she gazed at him, slowly drinking him in. This was so different from the photographs. So real. She could see the dust on his jacket and the way his hair fell over his eyes as he bent towards the pot, and she wondered what it would be like to brush that hair back behind his ear...

She tried to regain her focus. There were things to do, remember?

Now that she had a chance to observe him, she realized that he was filthy from head to toe. Here was something she could do for him.

She shuffled in the spare bedroom and came back with a clean shirt and slacks both sized for men. She'd had them delivered yesterday and they were new and clean, made of quality cloth, but in the simple style his purchasing records showed he customarily wore.

She came back with the clothes and saw that with the task of placing the rice complete, he was simply standing there. She approached him slowly, her head down, trying to show him that she didn't mean any harm.

With a only a foot between them she placed the clothes into his hands and pointed at the bathroom door. She knew he would find everything he needed in there for a shower. The shampoo and body soap favored, razors, aftershave.

He made no movement at first, and she waited for him to decide his next course of action. She wouldn't force this; too many decisions had already been taken away from him.

But after consideration, he again seemed to come to a decision. He turned and entered the bathroom, closing the door behind him but not locking the door. There was a window to the outside in the bathroom. If he wanted to he could leave at any time. She waited until she heard the shower turn on, and then made her way to the kitchen.

She prepared food for him while he showered. It was a long shower and she briefly wondered if he was okay at points until she heard him moving again at intervals. It felt oddly intimate somehow with him in the shower only a short distance away.

There was a lot of food. She knew they were going to have guests, and she wanted there to be plenty to spare. She wanted it to be good for him, and for the first time she found herself thankful to one of her foster mothers who had forced her to cook for the foster family. Seo-yeon had been a complete bitch who knew that her husband had perverse habits when it came to the young female occupants of his house, but she chose to not see or hear anything. It had been a long and terrifying year that Yeo woo had lived in that house. The only thing good that had come out of it was that Seo-yeon had shown her the basics and then criticized her ceaselessly until Yeo woo's cooking was to her liking.

As a result, Seo wool was confident her culinary skills were up to par. There was soup, green onion pancakes, sweet potatoes, kimchi, chicken, fried eggs, vegetables, and a huge amount of rice with black beans, all well-seasoned and nutritious. She laid each food out on the table in the correct order, then went to bring the rice bowl as Cap emerged from the bathroom.

As he entered the kitchen, Yeo wool noted Cap was using her towel to dry his hair. His hair, dark and thick, spiked up at all angles and his damp t-shirt clung to him, outlining the very masculine profile of his chest.

He was so handsome!

She felt her her heart start to beat irregularly, and the reaction startled her. To hide it, she placed the rice on the table and sat down and immediately started eating.

She didn't look up as she ate, but in short order the sounds of his slurping and chewing came to her as he started to devour the food before him. He must be very hungry she thought. The slurping seemed to get a little louder and with a pang, she realized she was actually hearing something else. Peaking up through her long bangs, she realized that even as he was eating he was also crying.

Tears streamed down his cheeks as he added food to his mouth. He kept chewing, stuffing in the food as if it was his last chance to eat, but he was also crying.

Yeo wool tried not to be alarmed. It couldn't be good for him to eat like this. Surely this would make him sick. She quickly search her brain for a solution.

The last 8 months of waiting for him, thinking of him, all seemed to come down to this moment of seeing him sitting across the table from her. As she looked at him she knew instinctively that in that moment of watching him eat and cry something fundamental inside her had shifted. He had gone from Cap the voice on the 'net' to Cap in the 'real' and he was now hers to protect.

But right now there was nothing to do but be there for him as he ate and cried, so that is what she did. At some point she became aware that her chest had began to hurt, and with wonder realized that it was her heart that was aching for him.

The other's would be here very soon too, she had seen them on the perimeter CCTV even as she had been filling the rice bowl. Perhaps they would be able to help him too. But for now she just sat there, eating with him, crying on the inside with him, being there for him.

At some point she realized he had eaten the last fried egg and stood up almost on auto-pilot to get another. She gently moved the side dishes closer to him as he kept eating, not stopping even as the tears kept coming.

It was just too much.

In a moment of desperation, she picked up her phone and called his again.

"Don't let them see you like this" she begged. "You are still Cap." She wanted to say more, but she knew she wasn't ready to admit that it was her that couldn't bear to see him like this. Her hero, defeated and sobbing over a bowl of rice.


	4. Touched

It was a relief when the proximity alarm sounded again, even though again Cap was clearly still frightened by the sound.

This time, when she entered the code to open the door, and the Team piled into the room, he went from alarmed into defensive mode. Maybe it was that she wasn't sure her heart could take any more of his tears, but it was actually a relief to see him respond to the unexpected guests by facing the three new faces and lifting the frying pan in a fighting stance.

"Yes," she thought, "you can get angry and ready to fight, so long as you don't give up."

The Team members, remembering her instructions about Cap's mental state treated him with equanimity, ignoring the frying plan and jovially sitting down to eat. She served them all rice, and extra portions to Near Space, who seemed especially good at creating a sense of normalcy at the table and ignoring some of Cap's more abrasive statements. Near Space was even good at trying to include her, though she knew she was a lost cause from a social perspective. Without the net, she could barely bring herself to nod at Demolition's praise of her documentary.

But as the dinner progressed, she acknowledged that bringing in the Team had accomplished more than just developing allies for her and Cap.

She observed Cap as he began to respond to the other members of the Team. They were perhaps the only people he would ever trust again, people who he had know before everything fell apart, and who had not betrayed him. As his trust for them reestablished itself, she knew that this could be a step to healing him emotionally.

Yeo wool strongly felt the discomfort at have three older men in the room with her. This was a scenario that in the past she would have avoided at all costs. But if this was what it took to help Cap, she could do this and even more. Fighting her instinct to move away from the group and lock herself in her computer room, she did her best to follow the conversation. Toward the middle it got to be too much, when the topic of evidence came up, she retreated to her computer station. Calling Cap's phone and putting it on speaker, she could answer their questions much more normally, relying on the inherent safety she felt speaking through the phone.

The rest of the dinner seemed a blur. The team discussed the fabricated evidence against Cap and promised they would help him clear his name, ignoring his protests that he would take care of it alone. Boasts about how they were going to make whoever framed him pay dearly for it. They made references to some of the missions they had played together, and the atmosphere again felt like it had back in the chat rooms before or after a game. There was jokes and laughter from the rest of the Team. Though none of the laughter came from from Cap or her, it was a good start.

By the time the guests prepared to leave for the night, the mood had felt hopeful and Cap looked somewhat relaxed. The rest of the Team left all at once, plunging the house into a sudden quiet that contrasted sharply with the previous boisterousness.

She found herself sitting alone in the room with him, he on the couch and her at the computer station. She had prepared his bed for him earlier; the blankets and sheets were a high thread count cotton, very soft and very clean. The room was cool, but the blanket was thick and warm. She wanted him to be comfortable tonight, to sleep knowing he was safe.

But watching him now, seeing his lost expression as he sat staring at nothing, she knew the dinner with the Team had not relaxed him to the state where he could sleep. She wondered if after the hell he had been through, there was anything that could make him feel safe ever again. Currently he looked like what he was, a person being hunted.

She got up and moved over to where he sat, keeping her movements slow and her head down as if she was approaching a wild animal. In a way, she supposed that's what he was. It was clear from how he held his body and started at any noise that a primitive part of his nature had been awoken in his struggles to survive the previous year. For a long time she had been the same. The attacks had come without warning, and she had never felt safe closing her eyes night. She had lived in a state of perpetual terror for so long, that she had become part animal in her mind, trusting her gut more than her mind. Even after she had found a safe place, her mind had not fully accepted the change. She saw threats everywhere, and had fallen back instinctively into fight or flight mode.

Seeing Cap now, she knew it might also take him a long time before the look of panic would no longer be so near the surface.

Yeo wool didn't kid herself that he would ever regain his former self completely. After those kind of experiences, the old Cap would not have survived. She had not survived as herself. The transformation had made both of them something darker, a shadow clinging like a second skin to their souls.

And she recognized the look in his eyes of someone who had seen the worst the world had to offer. How could she fail to recognize that look? It greeted her every day in the mirror. She knew what it was to face the darkness and come out on the other side with the darkness inside her.

From her position standing by his knees and looking down, she couldn't see his face. Instead she could make out every detail of his hands illuminated by the soft lighting from the sconce behind the couch. Since he made no signs of retreating or response to her proximity, she simply stood motionless for a minute, just studying those hands.

From her background research, Yeo wool knew that Kwon Yoo had practiced tae kwon do for many years. He had even won several regional awards and been part of the national team.

His hands were those of an athlete; strong, capable, and calloused. But on top of the strength, she could see those hands were now injured and scarred. Lines she knew where from a prison shiv were slashed over his right thumb, and the knuckles of both hands were bruised. A red gash was visible over three knuckles of his left hand, and all of his nails were chipped and uneven.

Yeo wool felt her heart again begin to ache looking at those hands. Like him, those hands had been strong and confident, but now they were damaged.

With a sudden insight, Yeo wool knew what to do next.

Without saying anything, she retrieved a towel, heated the kettle and filled a basin with hot water. She brought the basin back to the table and set it before him. After finding her kit she returned again to his side.

In the time it took to do this he hadn't moved. Slowly, she eased down onto the seat beside him and positioned the items before him. She opened the kit to show him the contents; cleanser, hand moisturizer, emery board, nail clipper, cuticle oil, and nail clippers. The set had been an expensive gift set she had purchased for herself online. It was a little pathetic buying a gift for herself, she had thought at the time, but no one else was going to purchase it for her.

Besides, she had justified, manicures were the only beauty treatment that she did with any frequency. Her hands were a tool of her trade and she treated them with care. She had long ago learned the basics from watching online videos, and was deft at performing self-treatments.

Yeo wool knew that explaining what she wanted to do would be difficult, so instead of asking him for permission, she placed her hand gently on his and pulled it lightly towards her lap. If he didn't want this, he could pull away and she would let him go.

He didn't resist her movement and made no sound, just sitting there passively as she positioned his right hand into place, steadying it with her own as she began to work on it.

The sound of the nail clippers as she clipped his nails seemed loud to both of them in the silence of the room. His shoulders flinched a little at the first clip, but still made no motion to escape her grasp. With care, she worked her way through the fingers on his right hand, clipping delicately to remove jagged edges and hang nails. When she was finished with the right she moved onto the left, and noticed that he helped now with the movement of his hands a little.

The nail file came next, and she was even more delicate with her movements as she smoothed the tops and sides of each nail, careful to move each hand slowly, to give him time to react to her repositioning. She repeated the process with the emery board.

As intervals, she sneaked small glances at his face. He kept his gaze fixed on their hands as she worked, and the expression on his face was inscrutable. But he wasn't protesting, and didn't look uncomfortable, so she continued.

Once all of his nails had been buffed to a smooth finish, she set his hands down again. She added a little of the cleanser to the water and mixed it with her hand, testing the water to ensure it was still warm but not too hot. Feeling that it was the right temperature, she took his hands in hers and lowered them into the water carefully. He let out an almost imperceptible 'mmph' as she did this.

Belatedly, she remembered the cuts on his hands, and realized it must have stung. She paused again for a moment to give him the opportunity to stop, but there was no other sound. He did not remove his hands from the basin.

As they sat there waiting for his cuticles to soak, Yeo wool considered the fact that neither of them had spoken to each other directly since the earlier phone call. She knew he might think it odd that she had still said nothing, but considering everything he hadn't said anything either, and the quiet felt... ...comfortable.

Without something that needed to be said, she didn't know how to break that quiet, and wasn't sure she wanted to. What they were doing now seemed to be working. If he wanted to speak, she would listen then to anything he wanted to say.

Three minutes later, she lifted his hands from the water and moved them onto the towel on her lap, gently patting them dry. The cuticles would be soft now, and easy to work with, and so she took the cuticle pusher from the kit and began to work again. Quickly, she removed the excess cuticle and took care of the worst of the callouses around the nail. This was delicate work, and her lips pursed as she took care not overdo it.

When she was satisfied with the outcome, she got ready for the final step. Taking the moisturizer from the table, she spread a generous dollop onto her hand and prepared to massage the lotion into his skin.

It wasn't until she had started spreading the lotion onto the first hand and felt his skin under hers that she became aware of the intimacy of the situation.

As she worked her thumb and forefinger around his palm, the atmosphere in the room morphed. She could feel the charge between his fingers in hers and she was conscious of the closeness of his body. The sound of their breathing seemed suddenly loud. Still she didn't think of stopping. Instead, her hands worked steadily to spread the moisture from his palm out to the tip of each finger. She firmly massaged the flesh, touching every part of his hand.

No words had been exchanged, but by the time she moved to repeat the massage on his second hand, it was clear the mood between them had again shifted. She raised the courage to look up as her thumb circled his palm and found his eyes locked into hers. The eye contact lasted only a fraction of a second, but it was like the flash of lightning followed by the boom of thunder. His eyes burned into hers and the blaze of it swept through her body like she was conduit for the energy of it.

Where the energy went, the heat of it followed, making her acutely aware of her body in a way she had never felt before.

Now, as the skin of her hand touched his, the energy between them was a palpable thing. Her breathing deepened until it felt like the oxygen in the room was depleted.

It was too much. She had built no tolerance for these types of sensations, but now she felt herself drowning in them.

She hastily finished massaging in the lotion and dropped his hand. Busying herself cleaning the equipment and putting things away, she kept up an internal monologue that this was neither the time or the place for such thoughts. By the time she had finished, her breathing was back to normal and the energy in the room seemed to have dissipated a little.

Looking at the clock, Yeo wool realized how late it was and knew Cap must be exhausted. She wasn't sure when the last time he slept was, but she imagined any sleep since his escape must not have rested him much.

After spending so much time holding his hands, it seemed natural now that when she returned to the couch, she took his hand to prompt him to rise, and led him to the spare bedroom. There was a night light in the room, and he turned it on then sat on the bed. She decided that was her cue to leave. Slowly, she made her way to the door, and started to close it behind her. She watched his gaze pass over hers again, and he spoke quietly.

"Good night."

and with a short pause, and a steady voice she replied,

"Good night."


	5. Sleeping

The sound of moaning woke Yeo wool from her slumber.

She glanced at the clock. It was 2:34 AM and there was only one possible source from where that sound could have come from.

She didn't hesitate. In only the tank and boy shorts she customarily wore to bed, she walked down the hall and opened the door to his room. The night light was still on, and she could see him clearly, curled into a ball on the bed, the sheets in disarray on the floor.

He moaned again and the muscles in his upper arms clenched as his body jerked in the defensive posture.

Trapped in what was obviously a nightmare, he reminded her of a dog she had found once in an alley. It had been one of the times she had run away as a child, and she had taken refuge from a downpour under the eave of a building. The moaning coming from the trash pile near her had alerted her that there was a creature even more pitiful than herself.

From the blood on it's side, it was clear the animal had been badly wounded, probably repeatedly kicked by someone. It had wandered off into the alley to hide, and even at at her young age, Yeo wool had know that the injuries were too severe for it to live.

Then, as now, the sounds have been awful, too terrible to ignore. Though she had been cold and wet herself, she had done her best to make the dog comfortable in its final hours. She constructed a bed with cardboard and rags she found in the nearby trash, and filled a bowl with rain water so it could drink. For hours she had stayed by its side until the evening dusk. Then, it's moans had grown weaker and more infrequent. Some final hacking coughs marked the end and then the dog had went silent.

She had cried over it's body until a passerby had found her and called the police. They had brought her back to the group home and the Administrator there had beat her so badly that she couldn't walk for a week. She had wondered then if she too was going to end up like the dog, hacking and then going silent forever.

Yeo wool cast the unpleasant memory aside. Observing Cap, she considered her options. She didn't want to wake him. He needed sleep.

She started by covering him again with the blanket. It was a cool night and the room was not heated. From a brush of her fingers on his shoulder she could tell he was chilled.

That was completely unacceptable to her. For months while he was in prison she had imagined him in the cell in solitary. She knew from researching the prison that the solitary rooms at that prison were little more than dark holes, with no light or heat, and no contact with anyone for days or weeks at a time. She'd had her own nightmares about him being there and the helplessness she felt in not being able to reach him had torn at her.

The knowledge reinforced her determination that he would be kept warm tonight. Unfortunately, this presented more of a challenge than she'd originally estimated. Within minutes of covering him, his tossing had again thrown the blanket to the floor. She repeated the process, this time tucking the ends underneath him to secure them in place. This, however, seemed to agitate him, as if the feel of being held down by the blanket was worsening the nightmare. He tossed fitfully until the blanket once again was in disarray.

Yeo wool lowered herself carefully onto the edge of the bed and held the blanket on him. This seemed to work. At her touch, his movements stilled and she wondered if she had woken him.

"Cap?" she tested, to see if he was awake.

Nothing. He no longer moaned or turned.

Sighing, Yeo wool continued to hold the blanket but knew that this wasn't a long-term solution. Even if she was willing to maintain this position to hold a blanket on him the entire night, the exhaustion from the day has weighing upon her, she was going to fall asleep soon herself.

She made her decision.

Moving as quietly as she could, Yeo wool eased herself down on the bed until her front was near Cap's back and then covered both of them with the blanket.

In this position she could keep him from turning so much that the blanket fell off and she could sleep. As she shifted closer to him, the warmth under the blanket increased, and she could feel the heat from his body radiating out towards her.

She breathed in deeply to try to relax, and his scent washed over her. The soap from his earlier shower mixed with an earthy scent that was all male, and she found that she liked the mixture a lot. In the quiet, she could hear his breathing begin to even out, his chest rising and falling in a slower rhythm.

The last thing Yeo wool thought of before sleep took her, was how nice it was to hear him breathe.

Yeo wool was a deep sleeper, and she came out of her dream slowly. The dream had been intense but without form; slow whispers of touch against her body, warmth, and comfort. Very nice.

The first thing she became truly conscious of was that she was truly warm. Since leaving her heated luxury apartment her accommodations had been more about security than comfort, and the feeling of waking to a cold room in the morning had become her new reality. But this morning, she felt heat all around her. It was a delicious sensation, like being wrapped in a heated blanket, and she was loathe to desert the dream-like state of it.

Experimentally, she stretched her arm a little and found that it was weighted down by something heavy. The blanket maybe? In a rush, the events of last night returned to her and she came to full awareness.

A brief survey of her limbs found that she was fully tangled up in the bed with Cap. It was if in the night they had entwined each other. Her legs were scissored around one of his thighs, her breasts pressed against the hard muscles of his chest, and her head resting in the crook of his arm. One of his arms was curled around her back keeping her pressed to him, the other hand rested lightly on the smooth skin of her stomach, just above her shorts where the tank top had rode up a little. She slowly tilted her head back and found his eyes closed, the relaxation of this facial muscles suggesting he had not yet awoke.

Yeo wool lay there quietly for many minutes, breathing in deeply. The position was not uncomfortable, but it was extremely intimate. She had never been in bed like this with a man before, and the experience was a little overwhelming.

But as she adjusted to it, another experience was developing. She could feel the juncture between her legs pressed against his groin, and felt a hardness there. Yeo wool was inexperienced in normal adult relations, but she was not naive. She knew from overhead discussions with foster brothers and from movie references that it was normal for that hardness to happen first thing in the morning. She tried not to think too much on it.

But apart from that feeling Cap's body reactions, she was also trying to assimilate her own body's response to his closeness. Her breasts felt heavy, and her skin felt overly sensitive.

As she tried to analyze the changes in her body, she felt a sense of wonderment that she could feel them at all. She had been so sure that these feelings, things she had only read about, would never apply to her. Not after the what had happened...

..her thoughts were interrupted by the stirring of Cap's body as he woke. His stretching body rubbed against her and a soft groan escaped her lips. It felt like her whole being was responding to him, without her conscious control. There was an answering ache between her legs that signaled she was aroused.

At the same time with Cap's movement, Yeo wool returned to reality a little. What would Cap think if he awoke and found her in bed with him like this? The last thing she wanted to do was to betray his trust by making him feel like she was taking advantage of him. Would he consider this a betrayal?

With that thought, her body cooled a little, and she started to gently move her arms trying to extract herself from her entanglement with Cap. But the movement was hampered by the tightening of Cap's hold on her.

Yeo wool tried again, this time trying to move her legs. Again, Cap's body prevented movement, his legs clamping down on hers, making escape impossible. In panic, she looked up at his face to find his eyes open and staring down at her with a peaceful expression on his face.

"Please stay." he asked.

Yeo wool relaxed her body into his and said simply,

"I'll stay."

And with that, Cap and she closed there eyes again and went back to sleep.


	6. Waking

When next Yeo wool woke, the proximity alarm was sounding and she was alone in the bed.

She tumbled sleepily from the room into the computer room, silencing the alarm and checking the CCTV. She saw Cap walking away from the apartment and was briefly alarmed until she checked the GPS on his burner phone.

He was carrying it. She calmed.

He was no expert, but he knew enough that if he wanted to leave her, he wouldn't take the phone with him. Trying to put herself in his shoes, she understood he needed to feel free to come or leave unchecked. After being locked up for so long, he would need space and choices.

So she kept an eye on the GPS signal as she prepared breakfast for them; grilled short ribs, a spicy seafood salad and bean sprout rice, as well as some side dishes of cold cucumber soup, seasoned kelp, and radish strip kimchi.

They were at the edge of a rural town, and his route would take him along a road now deserted since the closure of the warehouse it led to. In any case, she had purchased the empty warehouse as well as the land surrounding it. So long as he stayed along that route, he shouldn't encounter anyone.

From the movement of the signal is seemed that he was exercising, running with short sprints at intervals. That was a good thing, it meant that his injuries must be mostly healed.

He returned an hour later, going directly to the bathroom, and taking a short shower. He joined her at the table as she was setting out the hot rice.

"Good morning." Him.  
"Good morning." Her.

and then there was quiet for the next half hour as they ate.

As breakfast came to a close, Yeo wool knew it was time to do what she had been planning all morning. After spending last night with him, she no longer felt her customary need to maintain a verbal distance. Moreover, Yeo wool now had something to say. She had to prepare him for the mission to the junkyard with Demolition, and for that, she would need to talk to him. It would be difficult, but for him, she could do it.

"My name is Yeo wool." she began.

Cap looked up, clearly startled that she was now speaking to him directly.

Yesterday, he had heard her speak to the Team about the events surrounding the murder patterns, but always through the phone. Other than the two exchanges of goodnight and good morning, it was clear he was no longer expecting conversation from her. Perhaps he thought she wasn't capable of normal conversation. 8 months ago, he may have been right in thinking so.

"My name is Kwon Yoo." Cap finally responded.

"Yes." she replied. This was a good start she thought. Names, I can do names.

A long pause, and then Cap seemed to understand she needed help to move the conversation forward.

"You are very good with computers." he started.

It wasn't a question, but Yeo wool understood he was prompting her to talk about her skill set.

"I'm a master hacker." she clarified. "Probably one of the top 50 in the world." She stated it factually, as if it wasn't a colossal achievement for one so young to have accomplished.

Cap nodded, accepting her statement at face value.

"That's how you found me?" he questioned.

She shrugged. "It was actually pretty easy. You logged into your email at that internet cafe."

"But why?" Cap's tone had changed and Yeo wool looked up at him. For all the the question was brief, she knew what he was asking. It was a question he hadn't asked her yesterday, not at the cafe and not later when the Team had revealed that the cost of helping him had been that she had gone into hiding.

She paused for a moment, considering her response. It was a serious question, one that required her to search herself for the truth of her actions. In the end, there was only one answer.

"Because you are my Cap" she answered honestly.

"Your Cap?" He asked gently.

"Yes." This time her answer came without any hesitation. She didn't know what he would think about her declaration, but she knew that after last night she would need to be completely honest and open with him in order to bring him back from the edge. Neither of them could afford to hide anything.

Contrary to her worst fears, Cap didn't immediately correct her or make small talk to find a way to extricate himself from an uncomfortable subject. Instead he sat still, just watching her for a few minutes as if trying the reach an internal conclusion about her.

Finally, he seemed to reach the end of his thoughts. His hand extended across the table to where her hand unconsciously clutched the edge. His fingers felt warm and calloused against hers as he gave her a slight squeeze.

"Okay." he replied. "Your Cap." He relaxed his shoulders and for the first time, gave a small smile. "Let's review what I need to know"

That smile and his words breached a door within her. In the minutes that followed, she found herself talking with him just as she had talked to the Team on the phone, but without the interface. It was easier than she thought it would be, the words coming unhindered as he listened intently and didn't interrupt her.

She began by outlining to him what she knew about the mission to the junkyard.

For the rest of the day they sat together in front of the monitors, reviewing her intel. As they talked, Yeo wool soon discovered that Cap's skill set as Team Leader in the game were due to a keen sense of tactics and strategy. Cap listened carefully as she reviewed known data from her searches, and revealed her initial plan for infiltrating the junkyard. He responded with detail questions about contingencies and movements, challenging her to consider possibilities that hadn't occurred to her before. She soon found herself in unstilted debate with him, as he helped to refine and develop the plan with her.

It pleased Yeo wool how well their skills complimented each other. While her strength was in searching and providing information, his was in using that information to the best effect.

The experience was exhilarating in a way that reminded her of her first major hacking job. She did her best work under pressure, and with his safety and well-being on the line, she felt challenged.

It was also just who he was. Cap was a natural leader. He spoke with a calm sincerity that showed he respected her but also demanded respect. It was also clear that he expected her best, and that he would give the same of himself.

Just as in the game, Cap's thoughts reflected a creativity and innovation that blended well with his decisiveness. As they worked through the infiltration plan, his mind sorted and weighted the information to analyze where the Team could maximize gain while minimizing risk.

In the game, his leadership was unquestioned, but in the 'real' that effect was amplified. His entire demeanor radiated an honesty and integrity that could not be feigned. Sitting next to him, listening to him expand on each tactic, Yeo wool realized that for the first time in her life she had found someone she could trust not to hurt her. That trust had developed like this, so quickly and without conscious decision on her part caught Yeo wool off guard. But there is was.

As they debated the merits of one aspect of the plan, Cap's trademark of always taking the highest risks on himself also came again to the forefront. In the game this had lead to the Team reaching the highest ranks, but now Yeo wool was a little scared for him. It was clear he was committed to the goal of clearing his name and protecting all of them to an extent that was absolute.

The day flew by. They stopped only briefly to prepare lunch, continuing to discuss plans as they ate. When dinner time came, Cap volunteered to help prepare the meal with her.

Yeo wool discovered he was an intuitive partner in the kitchen, needing only a little guidance at first to get him started on where to find equipment as he completed his tasks of cooking eggs and preparing the rice. The kitchen was small, but they moved in a natural rhythm with each other, never blocking each other's movements.

Yeo wool knew it was at least partially because she was always so conscious of his body near her, his presence had a masculine energy that a previous Taoist foster sister would have described as 'yang'. It was assertive and direct like he was. It appealed to her.

When Yeo wool was not cutting off her own emotions, she knew that in comparison, her energy tended toward the feminine 'yin'. The receptive and nurturing part of her nature had not had much chance to bear fruit in her self-isolated environment, but she felt those emotions strongly now towards Cap. She was a passive force to his more assertive one and she felt herself gravitate towards him naturally, like water flows downstream.

The meal prepared and mostly set out on the table, Cap was filling and a bowl with rice, and Yeo wool reached for another bowl on a shelf above his shoulder. Sensing the movement, Cap's head turned, and she found the fingers of her right hand brushing against his nape.

Like flicking a light switch, the atmosphere in the kitchen changed from calm to electrically charged in an instant. It was like the previous night as she held his hand on the couch, but with ten-fold the energy.

Both froze completely. There was no disguising that both were feeling this. Her fingers were still at his neck, and the skin there was warm. She realized she could lightly feel the beating of his pulse there, a steady rhythm that seemed to synchronize with the pounding in her ears.

In slow motion, they were both turning towards each other. Their own kind of gravity was taking over. His hands moving towards her waist, her left hand finding a matching position on the other side of his neck.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, everything moved into place. Now her hips were pressing against the tops of his thighs and his head was bending down to touch his forehead against hers.

They rested against each other like that for a minute, testing the fit and finding that their bodies matched comfortably with each other. Her hands entwined in the thick dark hair at the nape of his neck, wanting to check that it was really as soft as it looked. It was.

His breath feathered over her cheeks. Their eyes had not yet met, and she somehow knew that if they did she would be lost in them. If their eyes met, there would be no turning back. She paused at that thought.

She had never taken this step with anyone. This was so far outside her previous realm of experience that she had nothing to rely on. Did she need to confirm first what this was to him? Did she need to let him know how she felt?

She searched her own heart for whether this was right and found no doubts, no questions there.

She lifted her face to meet his eyes.


	7. Quiet

Author's note: This chapter is fully M-Rated for sexuality.

Yeo wool's eyes met Cap's and it was like the gun announcing the start of a race.

Cap's lips descended onto hers, firm and warm, taking control of the kiss from the beginning. She was thankful that none of the painful experiences included contact with her mouth because she didn't want this to be tainted in any way. Her experience with kisses had been previously limited to some chaste touches and one boy's sloppy attempt that had ended in her kneeing him in the groin. She realized now that those had not prepared her in any way for what Cap was doing now.

It felt like being willingly devoured. His lips first stroked the corners of her mouth, moving gently over first her top then lower lips, squeezing and caressing them in turn. The pressure and heat of it was persuasive, and she found her lips opening beneath his without conscious thought, allowing him access to the inside of her mouth.

She felt his tongue then for the first time on her bottom lip, the tasting a light caress that left it moist. He repeated the caress on her upper lip, outlining it with a soft pressure and leaving it slippery. The moisture from this brought a new sensation to the kiss. With their lips lubricated, they glided gently over each other, the contact leaving sparks of awareness everywhere they touched until her lips felt hypersensitive.

Cap varied the pressure and depth of his lips, nibbling gently and stroking with his tongue until her mouth felt fully relaxed. Only then did she feel his tongue foray into her mouth to touch hers gently, as if asking for permission to go further.

With the hands in his hair, she pulled his face closer in response and he deepened the kiss. By then, her lips felt swollen, and every movement sending tendrils of pleasure signals from everywhere her skin met his. Her body was not silent during this time. She was acutely aware of her breasts now pressed tightly against his chest, the thin layers of their cotton t-shirts doing little to dissipate the heat between them.

The grip of his hands on her waist were soft but steady as he pulled her up slightly to meet his mouth. Sometime during the kiss, they had rotated, her back now against the kitchen counter and his legs bracketing hers. She could feel his body, the muscles toned and lean from years of martial arts molded against her softer curves.

The barrier of her shirt between his hands and her skin now seemed only an obstacle she wanted to tear down. Her hand moved from his hair down to her side and lifted her shirt so that his hands made contact with the smooth skin beneath.

Yes! It was both instant relief and fuel added to the fire burning within her. The heat intensified, his mouth now moving feverishly against hers, his tongue dueling with hers in bold strokes, touching the roof of her mouth, her teeth, every deep recess it could find. In turn she was emboldened. Her hands now moved over his shoulders, the play of muscles under his shirt rippled with the movements of his hands on her waist, and as her moved them to the rounded globes of her bottom.

They were exploring eagerly now, his hand still outside the shorts she was wearing, but touching in places she had never comprehended were so sensitive. The tops of her thighs, just below her hips were being massaged by his strong fingers in precise patterns, her muscles loosening until she felt like her legs were becoming jello. It became too much and she sagged against him.

He reacted to the give of her weight by lifting her hips up and encircling her legs around his waist. The pleasure this brought as the damp place between her legs made contact with the hardness between his was exquisite. She now could relate to the urgency women in movies showed when there were love scenes. Yeo wool had always thought it was just men who felt the drive like this, but it was clear to her now that women could feel it too. The intimate area between her legs was swollen and so sensitive to his movements that feeling of him against her caused her to undulate her hips to add more friction as she clung to him.

He groaned at the movement.

"Wait." he whispered. "Just wait a minute."

With that, he walked them out of the kitchen, his mouth against her neck, kissing her gently as they moved. His breath was harsh near her ear in the quiet of house as he entered his bedroom. He sat down on the bed with her in his lap, her legs still wrapped tightly around hip waist, and she began to circle her hips again, trying to repeat the motion that had brought the previous pleasure. With the added weight in this position, it was even better and she replicated it over and over. Her added to the contact by pressing down on her hips as she continued the slow grind.

They started to kiss again, and the dual contact stretched out for long minutes. The grind of their hips, the sliding of tongues and lips building the pleasure up to new heights.

In the pleasured haze of it, she couldn't recall how he ended up with his back on the bed, him staring up passionately into her eyes. But she knew this moment would be would be forever branded into her memory. Her hands moved to the sides of his face, caressing his cheekbones as his hand cupped her jaw. His face showed no doubts, no hesitation about what he wanted, and she wanted... ...no, **needed** to give him everything that he wanted. It was that simple.

From that point on there was no question for her of stopping. Her shirt and his were discarded, and she reveled in exploring the smooth muscles of his chest bared to her gaze. He was even more perfect than she imagined, the fading bruises doing nothing to diminish his sculpted physique. Each muscle was like steel under satin, and as she touched them lightly with her fingers she discovered she wished to feel them under her now swollen lips.

With the new appreciation, she realized she now could make that wish a reality.

Sliding down his chest, she captured the bronzed nub protruding over his pectoral muscle between her lips and gave a soft lick.

His answering groan fortified her resolve, and she continued with firm licks and kisses as she covered his chest. Her hair fell in a waterfall as she did this, tickling and feathering his skin, and she instinctively knew that this too pleased him.

As the path of her mouth descended, her kisses become stronger sucks as she reached the beautifully defined shape of his abs. He was flawless here, his body in peak condition from long hours of exercise. She touched and stroked the firmness of him, watching the muscles glide as he flexed under her ministrations.

He seemed to reach his limit as she reached the top of his loose track pants.

With a smooth motion, he pulled her up his body and rolled her over onto her back, carefully keeping his weight on his elbows and knees so as not to crush her.

This position felt very different, the weight of his body pressing her into the mattress reminding her that this was a man with a man's need and she was a woman. Tonight, she was going to be a woman for him.

With the grace of the athlete he was, Cap again moved until he was kneeling beside her legs on the bed. His hands moved to the draw string of her shorts, and with no uncertainty Yeo wool helped him to remove them, sliding them down her legs until all that was left was her bra and panties. She moved her hands up to disconnect the clasp at the front of her bra, but Cap's hands moved faster, stilling hers, and returning her hands to rest on the bed.

He bent over her instead, his mouth mere centimeters from the tops of her breasts and his breath blowing heated air in contrast to the cool air of the room. Then his lips lowered, kissing softly at one peak, then the other, alternating as the pressure of his lips deepened and gradually became sucks. He unclasped the bra and carefully removed the straps from one shoulder than the other, never stopping the kissing and suckling. The suction brought a new sensation to Yeo wool, each draw creating a new line of heat between the contact and a point lower in her body that ached and throbbed. She couldn't reconcile cause to effect, but she knew that somehow, this was preparing her body for what would come next.

His hands joined in with his mouth, massaging her breasts, making smooth strokes down the sides of her body and over her stomach until she was surging up into him with each movement, trying to maximize the pressure of his hands on her skin. Soft mewling began to escape uncontrollably from her mouth, and she might have been embarrassed if she wasn't at that point completely intoxicated with the pleasure he was building in her.

Her hands now roamed aimlessly across his back, past the band at the top of his track suit and over the curves of his buttocks. For a fraction of a second Cap froze at the contact of her hands there, and Yeo wool remembered what had happened in the prison. Those violations must have still been fresh in his mind. But the moment passed, and Cap continued his ministrations, moving slowly down her body until his lips reached her stomach. He stayed there for a long while. As if the satin of her skin fascinated him, he kissed and softly stroked every inch until she thought she might go crazy with the sensation of it.

Finally, he reached the top of her panties. Each inch of skin that came closer to that secret part of her was becoming exponentially more sensitive to his touches. Cap slid the sides of her panties down, one at a time his lips covering the delicate skin of her hips and nibbling to bring surges of electric pleasure to the surface. His fingers slid to the velvet of her inner thighs, bring another surge of wetness to her pussy. He hadn't touched her there yet, but her panties were already drenched with her essence, ready for him to explore her in the most intimate way.

She entwined her fingers in his hair and gently tugged to let him know she wanted his attention. Her breath was ragged now as he moved up her body, resting his weight on his elbows as he brought himself face-to-face with her.

"I'm ready." She whispered.

Cap focused on her eyes, as if evaluating her for any doubt. Then he bent and kissed her again, this time just the softness of lips, as if offering and receiving a benediction from her.

He knelt up then and helped her to remove her panties and to move the unclasped bra from behind her back. Those and his track pants were abandoned to the floor, and then it was just them, completely exposed to each other.

For all that it was new and strange, Yeo wool felt no embarrassment at being naked before Cap. As she examined the rest of his body, his erection did not scare her as she had thought it might. It was large and jutted upwards in a slight curve that she knew would follow the inside of her body. It was a thought that filled her with some apprehension derived from old and unwanted memories. In the past, that part of a man had brought pain and misery and a sense of deep shame. She deliberately blocked those thoughts before they could do harm to this time, this place. Tonight was for them, and those thoughts had no place between them.

Instead, she gazed at him with complete trust, knowing that what came next could only be, would only be, absolutely right for both of them.

Without the heat of his body on her, the room was chilly, and Yeo wool shivered a little. Quickly, Cap positioned them both on the bed and moved the blanket to cover them. Under the blanket with him, it was like being wrapped in a warm cocoon and she relished the feeling as he did little more that hold her for a few minutes, her back and thighs pressed tightly against against his chest and thighs, his erection pushing slightly against her lower back, his arms surrounding her.

When she was fully warmed, she rotated in his arms, fitting his month against his to let him know she wished to continue. The heat between her legs seemed to beckon to him, and she ground her hips against his as they first had in the kitchen. But this time with no clothing between them, the rigid flesh of his manhood thrust against the wet juncture between her thighs causing them both to groan. This time, he rotated his hips, and she felt a pressure between the folds of her pussy as he slid through the wetness and brushed against the swollen nub at the top of her sex.

He repeated the motion over and over, covering his erection with her cream until she was gasping and writhing against him mindlessly, reaching for something she couldn't yet name.

Cap reached down between her legs and slowly breached her swollen labia with a single digit, testing her readiness for more. His finger entered with ease, and he added a second, making her groan with the fullness as he moved them slowly in and out, stretching the hot tissue to prepare her for his invasion.

When he finally removed his fingers, she felt an emptiness there and wondered at it. But then Cap was moving above her, positioning himself at her entrance, and all thought left her.

He was larger than his fingers, and she felt a moment of trepidation as the head of his cock parted her folds and began to stretch her body open. But there was no pain. He probed her gently at first, pushing and retreating, feeding her an inch at a time as he breached her depths. The stretching was intense but not painful, she could feel every inch of him against the sides of her channel as it parted before him. The pressure of his cock as it moved inside her added friction, but his preparation had make her slick. With steady pressure, he glided into her, out of her, going deeper each time until with a loud moan and a final deep thrust he buried himself completely in her.

He waited then, no moving, for her to become accustomed to him. Looking up into his face she could see from the expression on his face that it was an effort not to move.

Seeing this, and confirming that nothing hurt, and Yeo wool made an experimental shift of her hips to test the waters. The glide of his cock within her as she moved and the feeling of being stretched and filled was still intense. It triggered a primitive part of her to respond, and sent a deeper pleasure signal to her brain. The pleasure was acute, and she helplessly repeated the motion.

Cap took over, retreating from her body to almost the end of his shaft, and then plunging steadily back in, until she was again completely filled.

The feelings intensified with each stroke, and Yeo wool's hands moved to Cap's back, urging him to move faster, to fill her even deeper. As his hips began a rhythm that satisfied them both, Yeo wool had trouble processing the intensity of it. Her fingers turned to claws on his back, scoring him slightly with her nails. She thought it might be hurting him, but this only seemed to spur Cap on. He began to thrust harder into her body. His hands moved to her hips and tilted them up, allowing him to angle his penetration, and Yeo wool felt the head of his cock moving against an ultrasensitive spot within her.

She was nearly mindless now, moaning and repeating "Cap" over and over as she reached for that nameless thing again. Cap was grunting softly with her now, his thrusts becoming wild.

She could feel the moment when his control slipped.

She had thought that he had been thrusting his full length into her before, but now she realized he had been holding back a little. His hands came to rest on her shoulders, pushing her down fully onto him even as her thrust upwards, and she felt his cock going deeper then ever before, coming to press on something deep within her that she realized must be the entrance to her womb. The pressure there blurred the line between pleasure and pain, causing a jolt to run through her and her body began to shake with the intensity.

This seemed to knock Cap out of the daze he was in. Instantly his hands on her shoulders was removed so that the pressure within her lessened.

But Yeo wool didn't want it to stop.

"More!" she cried, pressed down onto Cap to feel it again. Pleasure and pain and now almost all pleasure. She cried out his name now with abandon, begging with nonsensical words for more, all pretense of shyness gone.

Her cries seemed to release Cap back to the wildness. He repeated his stroke, pressing up again into her until the pleasure and pain again blurred.

Over and over and over. She had not idea for how long, and time meant nothing.

Without warning the thing that Yeo wool was reaching for crashed into and over her like a tidal wave. She felt the spasms rippling through her body, her pussy clenching involuntarily on Cap as her body convulsed with the sensation. All she could do was hold tightly to Cap as it overtook her, the pleasure and perfection of it wrenching the emotions from her until she felt everything and nothing at the same time.

Her convulsions seem to push Cap over an edge as well. In her pleasured haze, she felt him completely lose the rhythm he had set with his thrusts. Every muscle in his body seemed to tighten and clench as he groaned her name a final time, pushing into her so hard and fast she knew there would be soreness later. Then she felt a pulsing within her as he came, flooding her pussy with his seed.

Their breathing was ragged as they held each other in the aftermath. His face was buried in her neck and his body rested heavily against her. Both of them were covered with a fine sheen of sweat. At some point the blanket that had covered them had fallen to the side, and she knew the cool air of the bedroom would rapidly cool them. She didn't care. She didn't ever want to move again.

Cap solved the problem by grabbing the edge of the blanket and rolling them in it, keeping her pressed to his chest even as his softened erection slowly slipped from her folds.

Sex, Yeo wool realized, was messy. His seed was sliding from between her legs onto the bed, and the smell of their sweat and combined essence surrounded them. But for now, neither of them seemed to care. Cap bent his head to kiss her brow and then her eyes. No more words were needed, and then both settled against each other in the quiet.


End file.
